Hello!
The Writing Institute at the University of Pittsburgh is delighted to share information about our fourth event in the spring 2026 Creating a Culture of Access series: "Assessment for Access, Not Surveillance," with Dr. Gavin Johnson.
The event will take place on Friday, March 20, 2026 from 2-3:30pm EST. Registration via this embedded link. A Zoom link will be sent out to registrants 24 hours prior to the event.
Description:
While assessment—an umbrella term often including responding to, evaluating, and grading student compositions—has always been essential to the teaching of writing and its related scholarly pursuits, discussions of access and anti-ableism have been limited and primarily focused on policy and pedagogy (see Carillo 2021; Inoue 2023; Von Bergen 2025). When deployed, access in assessment has often been articulated as more structured and (hopefully) transparent criteria that guide students through the composing process with a strong sense of what they will produce. However, this approach to assessment can contribute to not only reduced student agency but also classroom surveillance. As a growing literature in writing studies suggests, assessment can enable surveillance even when instructors aim to empower student writing, language, and bodyminds (Johnson 2021; Madoré et al. 2021). A tension emerges, then, between this version of access and the normalizing work of surveillance.
In this workshop, we will interrogate this tension within the larger infrastructural context of academic surveillance and the weaponization of “accessibility” in the necropolitical university. Participants should be prepared to question their assumptions about assessment, its “objectivity,” and its instability. Moreover, we will work in coalition to consider assessment otherwise – as something truly accessible and beyond surveillance.
Recommended reading: Gavin Johnson (2021), “Grades as a Technology of Surveillance: Normalization, Control, and Big Data in the Teaching of Writing,” and Megan Von Bergen (2025), “On Neurodivergence/Disability and Labor-Based Grading”.
For more information about the Creating a Culture of Access series, including dates, times and participants for upcoming events, visit this website.
Any questions can be directed to jem496. I hope you will be able to join us!
Warmly,
Jessie Male
Series Curator
Dr. Jessie Male (rhymes with sale)
Teaching Assistant Professor of Disability Studies
jem496
she/her/hers
Office: 628F CL